


Beetlejuice But It's Better Because I Wrote It

by VioletThePorama



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Angst, Beetlejuice Has Mood Ring Hair (Beetlejuice), Cross Between Movie and Musical, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, I can't believe I'm writing this, I told myself i wouldn't, I've Consumed So Much Beetlejuice Content, Light Angst, May Have Cartoon References, Mostly Inspired By Musical, My Take On Beetlejuice Coming Back, Some Plot Bunnies, my way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24521320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletThePorama/pseuds/VioletThePorama
Summary: Months after the whole Beetlejuice Incident, Lydia runs into the ghost with the most hanging out on her roof. She has a few things to say to him regarding what happened last. Beetlejuice just wants to know how he can get his BFFF back.Expect typical wacky shenanigans and plot bunnies held together with some semblance of plot.
Relationships: Adam Maitland/Barbara Maitland, Beetlejuice & Lydia Deetz
Comments: 27
Kudos: 60





	1. Chapter 1

School was tiring, especially when Lydia rode her bike home every day. Her dad approved because it was exercise, and sometimes, it was fun. Freeing, even. The teenager was able to veer off the path and roam through the nearest tree line, where she could stop at any point and take photos of the trees, capturing how the light filtered through their leaves and contrasted to their tall, dark trunks. It was nice to have a choice as to what time to arrive home, where she knew she would be met by all of her parents (biological, step, and ghostly), who would  _ see _ and  _ talk _ to her about her day. 

But occasionally, a creeping feeling would overtake her. Even if she had this safety net, she couldn’t fend off the thoughts that accosted her when she stepped foot outside of her school and didn’t immediately see her mother's car lined up with the other parents' vehicles in the lot. No matter how Barbara or Delia tried to listen and talk to her about her hobbies, neither of them could match her mother's laugh or advice in how to perfectly capture a subject in a picture. 

Lydia could try in school all she wanted. She could  _ talk _ to her father about what was bothering her, keep her grades up for the Maitlands, and even join clubs to meet new people (though she didn’t). None of it would bring back her mother, and it wouldn’t earn her friends. Not when she was still dressed for a funeral that had already happened and turned up her nose at any partner she was stuck with for a project. 

It was during times where Lydia’s mind got stuck in a rut that returning to the house after her bike ride felt suffocating. The teenager was stuck between the horrible paradox that was trying to ignore her feelings until they overtook and drowned her, and tracking down whichever parent seemed to be in the most easy going mood, and telling them everything in excruciating detail. 

So the next time it happened, Lydia arrived home from school, resolving to try something in the middle. First, she greeted everybody, glancing at a busy Delia and waving to her father in his study. The teen assured herself that the Maitlands were in the living room, going over near-imperceptible color differences in some paints. She said hello, proudly informed them of her new letter grade in math, and retreated up to her room. 

Once alone, she deflated and moped about, doing the bare minimum of the work she had been assigned that day, and left the rest to go over when she wasn’t so distracted. Then Lydia slipped out of her room and walked into the empty attic.

Then she went to the window and shimmied up to the roof. Up there, she could try to work through her head space by herself. If she couldn't figure something out, she would tell somebody, but not every funk needed to end with Lydia running to somebody else.

So atop the house was where she determined she would think, ruminating on the mental image of her mother. The thoughts blurred together with the feeling of frustration she had retained from math class (that letter grade had been difficult to get), and she let it run together, each thought bleeding into something else as the noise and chaos of her mind grew with every passing minute. 

Lydia wasn’t very surprised when she started to cry, and she tilted her head down as the tears ran freely, blinking them away and examining what she could see of the street from where she was. It was empty, as it was still mid-afternoon. It had been maybe an hour that the teenager had been on the roof, and there wasn’t too much longer she could linger without raising some suspicion, but she was making progress. 

Suddenly, any semblance of silence Lydia had was silenced, as the shingles behind the girl creaked with the movement of somebody else, and she whipped around with no regard to the height of the roof, thoughts consumed with the urgent need to uncover the identity of whoever was intruding upon her, though in her heart, she already knew. The acrid smell, mingled with the unpleasant scent of rot and mildew reached her nose first, and she looked up, met with the sight of the demon who had plagued her family since the Incident months ago. Beetlejuice. 

Immediately, Lydia scrambled to the side, closing some of the distance between her and the window as she gave the poltergeist as large a berth as possible. “Beetlejui-!” She began, but was halted by him lunging forward and slapping a hand over her mouth. The teenager bit him and immediately regretted it, spitting and clambering back. The demon let go of her, putting some distance between the two of them as he held out his hands obligingly. 

“Alright, alright. I’m back here. Let’s not say my name right now, capiche?” Beetlejuice said, and Lydia narrowed her eyes at him.

“What’re you doing here?”

“What’re  _ you _ doing here?” he shot back mockingly. “Trying to aim for the birdbath again?”

Lydia felt her cheeks color and stuttered as she tried to reorganize her thoughts. “I’m not trying to kill myself. I  _ mean _ , weren’t you gone doing something?”

“What’s so important that you have to be on the roof to do it?” the demon huffed, ignoring the latter portion of her question for the moment. 

“I was thinking.”

“Oh,” Beetlejucie said. “Me too. I was going to, anyway.”

Lydia glanced at the window below her, trying to throw together a plan. “Why are you back?” she asked tensely.

The poltergeist crossed his arms as he leaned backwards, weight supported by seemingly nothing. “Believe it or not, I like this roof, and I had dibs on this spot  _ way _ before you did.”

“I mean, are you here to try… you know,” Lydia glanced to his left, keeping him in her peripherals, though she was suddenly too embarrassed to look right at him. 

“Am I-?  _ Oh _ . Uh. No, I’m not here to do any of… that.”

“Right,” she said skeptically, but felt herself begin to relax in slow little increments. “So you wouldn’t do anything if I yelled for my dad or the Maitlands?”

“I guess I’d have to leave, as much as I would like to see those sexy beasts again,” Beetlejuice said, and Lydia saw a streak of purple run through his green hair, despite how nonchalant he sounded about the idea. Actually, now that she gave some thought to it, his hair had been shades darker than usual throughout the conversation. “But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t knock this thinking place off of my list.”

“I’ll consider it,” she shrugged. “But any funny business…”

“Nothing funny? You know how hard that is on me,” the demon played it off, and leaned towards her. Lydia tried not to shrink back, though by his expression she didn’t do a very good job. His tone shifted to something more serious. “I’m not going to do anything to you.”

“I’m sure you say that to all your bride-to-be’s,” Lydia deadpanned, and Beetlejuice looked properly ashamed. 

“Come on, Lyds. It was a green card thing. I wasn’t gonna stick around or do anything  _ weird _ . I just needed a living bride and you were the only option.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “And don’t  _ justify _ that. I don’t care why you wanted to do it. It was creepy and awful and you  _ forced _ me into it.”

“At least I didn’t kill anybody,” he snapped, and she flinched, the memory of mingling trails of red fabric staining with a liquid the same color flooded her mind. 

“You tried to,” Lydia said darkly. “And you did. Remember Otho?”

“What?” Beetlejuice sounded surprised. “That guy? No, I just sent him to Jersey. I figured he’d have called you back by now.”

Lydia paused, processing it for a moment. Then she decided that she was still mad at him, regardless of whether or not the guru was dead. “I’m going inside. You can stay up on the dumb roof, but  _ don’t _ go inside.”

She didn’t wait for him to reply, slipping in through the window and returning to her room to finally force her way through the rest of her homework, shoving the memory of her once-friend out of her mind. 


	2. There's Growth I Swear

Lydia’s encounter with Beetlejuice left her disoriented, but thankfully distracted from her earlier ponderings. Instead, her mind turned towards the events of a couple months prior. Events that everybody else avoided mentioning. 

The ‘Incident’, as Lydia had taken to calling it in her head, had been a mix of great fun, uncomfortable situations, and sorrow. It had been a bonding experience that finally brought her back to her father, and something that set her apart from anybody else in her class, because how were they supposed to live up to what she had been through?

The demon showing up initially reminded her of the wedding, of how she had  _ killed _ somebody, even if they had already been dead. Beetlejuice hadn’t seemed very mad about being killed, and had even come back to help them from finding out what Juno would have done. He left on terms that he had feebly tried to twist into being good and memorable, and it really  _ had _ been fun scaring everybody in the neighborhood with him. 

So maybe if Lydia set some boundaries… 

She couldn’t believe that she was considering talking with the demon again. But the teen didn’t mention his presence to anybody else, and to the best of her ability, played off any questions that were raised about how quiet she was being. 

Thoughts that she had already reviewed and dismissed were resurfacing, and she spent the rest of the night going through every detail she could remember of that fateful day, ending up with something more fun and meaningful than the last impressions had left her with. Lydia even looked up what a ‘green card marriage’ was to make sure she knew what he had been talking about, and found nothing too suspicious. It really was just used to live somewhere else. 

Lydia remembered Beetlejuice claiming to be invisible, just like her. And as disgusting as the thought of intimate relations were, she tried considering whether or not she would have married somebody just to be visible. When she realized that she had almost killed herself trying to achieve that, she began to understand it a little more. 

Though the poltergeist very much needed a lecture on laws and personal space. 

In the morning, Lydia emerged from her bedroom, exhausted, introspective, bedraggled, and ready to confront Beetlejuice on the roof once school was out. 

So she went through the rest of the school day somewhere between energetic and dazed, took her notes, actually focused on her english vocabulary test, and rode straight home. 

Lydia tore into the house once she was back, greeting each parent she saw, and excusing her enthusiasm for that of an idea- taking consecutive pictures of the street from the house everyday. So she grabbed her camera, and scrambled out to the roof with it. 

She went ahead and took a picture to help back up her claim, and waited around for the ghost. But after a half hour with no appearance from him, Lydia got antsy. So she took a breath. 

“Beetlejuice,” she called. There was no answer. 

“Beetlejuice,” Lydia went on, and the air suddenly seemed much sharper and tenser. 

“Beet-,” she said, and startled as he popped into existence a foot or so away from her. 

“No need to finish that,” Beetlejuice quickly assured her. “I was in the area.”

“You weren’t here, though,” the teenager said shortly. And frowned as he stared at her. “What?”

“And here I thought you didn’t want me around,” Beetlejuice said, a teasing lilt to his raspy voice, though his face didn’t express it. And when Lydia paused for a moment to really look at him, she could see how his hair was tinted purple the further it was from the roots. 

“I thought about it,” Lydia excused. “And I want to talk to you about some of it.”

“Sure,” the demon shrugged, looking vaguely uncomfortable. “What about?”

“The wedding,” she said immediately, watching as Beetlejuice’s expression soured. 

“I already told you, I wasn’t going to  _ do _ anything. You didn’t even have to follow it afterwards, I just needed to get the ceremony out of the way.”

“I know,” Lydia huffed. “It was a green card wedding or whatever, but how was I supposed to know that you weren’t going to do anything?”

Beetlejuice froze, hair darkening. “Wait. I didn’t like, traumatize you, did I? You didn’t think I was going to…”

The concern, worry, and loathing in his voice made Lydia freeze. Suddenly, she was out of her element, not having expected something like this from the admittedly volatile entity. “... No,” she admitted. “I didn’t really think about it until my dad mentioned something about it. But it was still weird, and I was kind of freaking out the whole time.”

“Because of me?”

“Because of everything, I guess.”

Beetlejuice nodded, and Lydia fiddled with the camera in her hands. 

“Well… You’re only a few years from marrying age anyway, right?” he asked, sounding a bit like he was grasping at straws. 

Lydia hummed. “How old do you think I am, exactly?”

“Seventeenish…?” he hazarded. 

“I  _ just _ turned fifteen, dingus.”

Beetlejuice looked horrified. “I thought… No wonder everybody was acting so weird, huh?”

“Yep,” Lydia popped the p. 

They sat in silence for a while, with Lydia more comforted by the fact that he seemed more horrified at what he had done than she was, even if she  _ was _ going to avoid the color red for a while. Speaking of which…

“I’m sorry for killing you,” she said lamely. 

Beetlejuice shrugged. “I would say it isn’t the first time, but it kinda was.”

“You were going to kill my dad,” Lydia blurted, and pieced together that the lack of talking about this to anybody in the house was making her more stressed, because she suddenly felt much more open. Raw and horrible, but open, and strangely relaxed once it was out of her mouth. “So…”

“It’s not a problem, kid. Inconvenient, but it happens to the best of us.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled, and watched him for a while. Eventually, though, she shifted towards the window. “I should go back in… I can come out and meet you up here tomorrow, though.”

The demon looked surprised, hair lightening back up. “Yeah, okay.”

Lydia took one more moment to nod at the man in the striped suit before ducking back into her house. 


	3. There Goes My Plot

Slowly, going up to the roof after school became a Thing. Lydia did it under the guise of taking daily pictures of the road, which she followed up on, trying to get new images of passing cars or people.

At first, she was tense and on edge the entire time with the presence of Beetlejuice on the roof with her, continuously ready to scramble back inside or yell his name to send him back to the Netherworld (though since he had yet to let her properly summon him, she would have to risk him being able to interact with the human world before she would be able to banish him again). But the demon gave her space. He sat maybe a foot away from her at all times until she voluntarily closed some of the space so they didn’t have to talk quite as loudly. 

After a few trips to the roof to sit with him, Beetlejuice began to fish odd little gifts out of his pocket dimension for her. At first, Lydia had been suspicious of his intentions, but he seemed genuine as he gifted her things like a new spider-shaped broach, or random scraps of neon fabric. Spending time with him brought up the  _ fun _ memories of the Incident all those months ago. The hilarious screaming of any delivery person, neighbor, or census taker who came by the house. Even now, when the doorbell rang, Lydia would hype herself up to scare them. Though her parents discouraged it. 

Beetlejuice seemed to be more comfortable as well. He was still very energetic to the point of being manic, constantly bouncing in place or fiddling with a random object from his pockets, but his hair was no longer dripped in a deep color. Instead leaning more towards shades of bright green with more frequency than anything else, especially when Lydia was up with him. This didn’t account for when she left though, and the teenager was often able to spot how his face fell or he tensed as she climbed back down into the window. 

While Lydia heeded her parents warnings regarding being so high up, she still carried on with her plans because the demon still hadn’t gone inside, no matter how many times she brought up the subject. He stayed almost constantly on the roof. Even from the road when she left or entered the house, she could sometimes catch sight of him. Nobody besides herself seemed to notice Beetlejuice, but of course, they didn’t know what to look for. Everybody else had a tendency to ignore the strange and unusual. 

The teenager planned to change that particular habit of his, though, and went up to the roof with a plan. 

“I’m going to tell the others about you,” she announced to an empty roof one weekday. In an instant, Beetlejuice was there and giving her a mortified and betrayed expression. Before he could open his mouth, she barreled on. “It’s nothing that you’re doing, you just seem lonely when I’m away at school. And we keep running into close calls with the Maitlands up here.”

“Spoil sports,” the demon huffed, leaning back on the roof and crossing two legs over another. “What does this have to do with telling them?”

“If I can ease them into it, you could start coming inside,” Lydia informed him. Her plan was a bit iffy, but she didn’t want him stuck on the roof anymore. Besides, Beetlejuice was pretty touchy about being left alone, even if he hadn’t voiced the sentiment since the first few nights Lydia had visited him. 

The demon scoffed. “Right, Lyds. I’m sure that’ll work out really well for us.”

“Beetle-” she began, before cutting herself off at his look. “You really need to come up with something else for me to call you if you don’t want me to say your name.”

“I can’t help that it’s a summoning thing. Figure something out yourself.”

“Later,” she dismissed. “What do you think?”

Well,” the poltergeist sat up. “I think everyone here knows how this is going to go-”

“It’s literally just you and me up here.”

“Don’t be rude. It’s you, me, and the audience. But we all know that when you bring me up, your family and those amazing ghosts in there get upset or something dumb like that because they can’t handle all  _ this _ ,” he gestured to himself, and Lydia snorted in amusement. “-and then I’ll get summoned. And believe me, that’ll cause more problems for you than it’s worth. I’m on a strict no-summoning policy right now.”

She frowned, furrowing her brow. “Alright. What else would you suggest?”

Beetlejuice didn’t seem to have an answer, floating silently up, and then upside down as he thought. “That we keep meeting up here?” Came the eventual answer.

“We will,” Lydia assured. “But we’re going to get caught eventually. One way or another.”

“Right…”

“I can bring it up as a hypothetical, and you could sort of… hang around in case of a summoning, so you can come in before they’re done?”

“I could,” he mused. “You all seem to be  _ very _ slow at saying three words in a row.”

“It’s a talent,” the teen deadpanned. “So it’s a plan?”

“So soon?” the ghoul lamented, righting himself and bringing out a calendar of unknown origin. He began to rapidly flip through it as he spoke. “Can’t we wait a few days? Years? Centuries? I’m booked.” 

“I’ll wait a week if you’re that torn up about it.”

“Lyds,” Beetlejuice fixed her with a serious look. “You’re a lifesaver. No that’s not… you’re a real life-taker.”

She rolled her eyes. “Be careful, or I might do it again.”

“Whatever you say.”

The teenager nodded and sat back on the roof tiles, bringing her legs up to her chest. “Why can’t I summon you?”

Beetlejuice considered this for a while. Lydia almost asked the question again, before she glanced at him, falling silent when she noticed the look on his face. Before she could tell him to forget about it, he carried on like nothing was wrong. “Aside from the fact that it’ll make it harder for you to hide me like a dingy pet in a cartoon-,”

“I thought you didn’t care about staying hidden,” Lydia interrupted, trying to poke some fun at him. 

“Yeah, well,” the ghost grumbled. Another arm sprouted from the roof and handed him a can of peanuts. He offered her some before continuing on. “If your goody two shoe parents saw me, they’d make a fuss.  _ Part _ of the reason I don’t think we should tell them about me being here.”

“They aren’t that bad,” she defended halfheartedly. It was sort of comforting that he actually seemed more focused on friendship than revenge or anything that she previously had thought he would be after. 

“Perspective. Anyways, the other reason you can’t summon me is because of a cliche plot device,” Beetlejuice stopped and looked at her. Lydia was terribly confused by his words, which he seemed able to gauge from her expression. “Look, just… it’ll probably come up later.”

The teenager felt a bit let down by the lack of explanation, but deigned to let him have his privacy. “Alright… but a  _ plot device _ ? You’re talking like this is part of a story.”

A painfully wide looking grin sprung onto the demon's face. “Haven’t you heard?”

“We aren’t in a-” Lydia began. Then she paused. “Are we?”

“Kid, ignorance is bliss,” Beetlejuice cackled. Lydia watched him glance off into the distance and wave before she shook her head and decided that it was time to go back inside. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really do be writing this don't I? 
> 
> Tbh kind of flying by the seat of my pants here. The plot is kind of composed of plot bunnies, but I at least wanted to start off with something more concrete. 
> 
> So, enjoy.


	4. Abort Mission

Lydia went home from school on the Friday of her plan, after taking pictures of some geese that flew overhead. After greeting the ghostly couple in the kitchen, she checked in on Delia. Her step-mother had been working on some new art, and even Lydia had to admit that the process of sculpting was kind of cool. 

“Is it going?” Lydia asked with piqued interest at Delia’s appearance. Her step-mother was in her work suit, and covered in some sort of dust. 

“It’s going,” Delia agreed, and turned to usher her out before Lydia could get a good look at anything else. “And I’ll show you what it’s going to  _ be _ if you give me some time. I’ll bet you’re on your way to the roof again?”

“Yup,” Lydia gave her a flashed smile and nodded at Delia’s warning to ‘be careful’ before going to find her father. As per usual on the days that he didn’t have to go to work, he was filing papers in his bright, artificially lit office. She left him to that and followed the rest of her routine, climbing up onto the roof. 

“Beej,” she called, after snapping a few pictures of a passerby. Within seconds, the demon was lounged out on the roof a foot or two away from her. 

Lydia carefully moved closer, reaching with one hand to lean on the shingles as she made her way over to him. 

“So I’m Beej now?”

“I’m trying it out,” the teen shrugged. “Like it?”

“I’ve been called worse,” a pause. “I’ve also been called better.”

“A happy medium then,” Lydia nodded. 

“Don’t lie, most mediums have depression.”

She gave an appreciative chuckle and handed him a picture she’d nabbed before climbing up. It was one she’d taken of a sleeping bat the week prior. (A lucky catch that had taken some climbing and searching for an old house somebody at the school had mentioned to her. It had turned out to be real, and was super cool, although old). 

“Woah, Lyds,” Beetlejuice took the picture and stared at it, examining the photo paper from every angle. His hair turned a faint pink at the very edges, and his face lit up as he went over each detail. 

Where Beetlejuice gave her a little trinket every few days, Lydia had only given him something once before. It had been another picture, a capture of some roly-polys she’d found in the garden. The demon had reacted similarly then, too, first with a startled exclamation, and then with excitement. 

His reaction to gifts made Lydia feel…  _ bad _ , almost, though it wasn’t quite the right word (especially when they were so small, though she was in fact quite proud of the pictures themselves), which she planned to remedy by giving him more. 

While he was happily distracted, Lydia took her time in sitting down. Then she watched him for a moment, letting him revel in the glory of having something else to put into his bottomless pockets before she ruined the mood. 

“I’m telling them today.”

Beetlejuice paused, and the pink in his hair vanished. A surprised expression graced his face before recognition took over, and he shrugged. “Alright.”

“I’ll try to lessen the blow some,” the teen assured. “I’ll tell them that I’ve been thinking about you, and I’ll decide what to tell them next based on how they react to that.”

“Right,” the poltergeist grumbled. “And I’ll just hang around ready to stop them from summoning me. Since that’ll go over so well.”

“I doubt they’ll summon you.”

“Unless it’s to banish me back to the Netherworld.”

Lydia sighed, not wanting to force him into revealing himself, but also not willing to keep hiding why she was going to the roof so often. “You’ll show up before that happens.”

Beetlejuice muttered his reluctant agreement and tilted his head back to look at the sky. 

Lydia shifted a hair closer, watching him. Then she furrowed her brows. “Hey… Beej?”

An inhuman noise. That meant she had his attention. 

“I’ve been thinking. And I know Adam, Barbara and I can see you…” the teen turned to watch the demon for a reaction. So far, she hadn’t gotten anything besides a tint of dark towards the roots of his hair. “But will my parents?”

“Whaddaya mean, Scarecrow?” Beetlejuice asked, but he sounded more dismissive than curious. 

“They couldn’t see you before. I know you mentioned they might be able to after all… of this. But what if they can’t?”

And with that, Lydia knew she’d gotten his attention. He faltered, and his face fell like she’d only seen once before, back when she’d told him how horrible the wedding had been. His hair darkened all at once. Like his head had been dunked in paint. One of his hands raised and his mouth parted slightly to allow a digit into his mouth, where his sharpened teeth immediately found purchase in gnawing at his nail. 

“I guess you’d have to summon me.”

“What’ll happen if we do?” she asked cautiously. 

“Can’t say for sure,” Beetlejuice took his hand from his mouth and glanced at her. “Don’t worry about it, Lyds. That’s for me to think about. Whatever happens, happens.”

The teen nodded mutely and sat with him for a while longer. She didn’t comment on it when he went back to biting his nails, only moving when she got up to leave, nudging his arm in what she hoped came off as a motion of solidarity, before she vanished back into the house. 

The next step came up during dinner, after Lydia made sure the demon on the roof had been properly warned. While other meals throughout the day tended to depend upon the person, Lydia’s family always gathered during dinner. The tradition had been lost for a while after the death of her mother, but soon after moving, they started back up again. During the time that her father was at work or filing papers in his office, the Maitlands were more than happy to help teach Lydia and Delia to cook and bake, where neither woman had much prior experience. (The ghostly couple were getting better at interacting with the real world and were even able to find certain foods they could taste, though it usually resulted in something too spicy, sweet, or strong for a regular person to enjoy.)

“So,” Lydia began, once there was a lull in their usual dinner conversations. She watched as Delia elbowed her father and nodded to her, and waited to have their attention. 

“What is it, dear?” Barbara asked curiously. She put down her utensil and focused on Lydia, giving her a bright smile that cleared up any doubts Lydia had had about the idea. 

“I’ve been thinking about Beetlejuice,” Lydia said carefully. Saying the name once wouldn’t hurt, and would help let the demon know that now was the time, since he seemed to have reactions to when she said it. 

Her family's reaction was instantaneous. Barbara’s smile shifted to something full of concern and worry, and Adam took a deep breath. The ghost opened his mouth to say something before her father frowned, silverware clattering as he dropped it onto his plate and stood abruptly. 

“Charles,” Delia admonished. “We haven’t heard Lydia out.”

“Is he here?” Charles asked sharply, scanning the room. Delia called his name again, and he slowly sat back down upon not spotting anything out of the ordinary. 

“... I have to agree with Charles,” Barbara said, looking at Lydia with pursed lips. 

“-But Delia is right,” Adam finished. “What’s brought this on?”

“Well,” Lydia hesitated. She had expected a bad reaction, and this wasn’t as bad as it  _ could _ have been, but the anger was still there, and the tension was palpable. “I’ve been thinking about when we first moved in.”

“Alright,” Adam nodded, and took Barbara’s hand. Charles watched Lydia carefully, but she couldn't discern his expression. 

“Right,” Delia exclaimed suddenly. Like she had realized something. “You two were friends for a while, weren’t you?”

“We- yeah. We were. I was thinking about how Beetlejuice-” the teen watched everybody stiffen at the name. “-wasn’t that bad.”

“Lydia,” her father immediately interjected. “He tried to marry you.”

“He wanted to be seen,” Lydia shot back, feeling guilty yet satisfied at how that made her dad back down, obviously still uncomfortable with what she had disclosed to him about feeling invisible. 

“Still,” Barbara murmured, reaching across to take Lydia’s hand. The teen pulled back before Barbara could touch her. “It wasn’t right of him to do that to you. And that’s ignoring how he tricked you into trying to-to exorcise me.”

“And his comments,” Adam said, more darkly than Lydia had thought him capable. 

“He was rather inappropriate,” Barbara nodded. 

Lydia frowned, trying to figure out how to take control of the situation back. “He isn’t that bad, and he never did any of that to me. It was a misunderstanding! Beej didn’t try to exorcise Barbara until he thought I wasn’t going to be his friend anymore-”

“He was wildly unstable the entire time he was here,” Her father interrupted. The Maitlands nodded their agreement. “He was an unhealthy friend for you to have.”

“Especially if the ‘misunderstanding’ led to him trying  _ that _ ,” Barbara added on immediately, and Adam went on to say something too, before Delia spoke up.

“Lydia. You said ‘ _ isn’t _ ’,” Her step-mom said slowly. Lydia froze from where she had been trying to get a word in. “What exactly made you bring him up?”

The table exploded into chaos, and Lydia found herself unable to make out all of their yelled and rushed words. Instead, all she could focus on was the burning feeling in her chest. None of them were listening to her. 

“Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice-!” The teen cried out, squeezing her eyes shut. She left out the third repetition, so she didn’t properly summon him, but it should have been enough to get his attention.

Sure enough, the voices got louder. One of them started yelling- her father, she thought. Somebody took a hold of her arm, tugging her up and out of her seat, and the grip, while loose and more guiding than anything else, felt like fire. Lydia jerked away from whoever it was, and ran straight into somebody's chest. 

“Hey Scarecrow,” she heard Beetlejuice rasp in her ear. Lydia groaned in response, refusing to open her eyes. Hands grasped her shoulders and she felt the floor shift beneath her before they snatched away, and suddenly the room was a lot quieter. When she opened her eyes, she was alone in the attic. 


	5. Dinner

Betelgeuse (how did you think it was spelled?) stayed up on the roof like usual when Lydia went back inside. He scratched his initials into the roof tiles with his sharpened index as he waited for the girl to begin talking about him. Before all too long (though it still felt like an eternity), he felt the tug in his gut that came with someone saying his middle name. 

So of course, he flashed down to try and peer in at them through a window. If he went inside right away, that would probably breach some level of trust that Lydia had in him, so instead, Betelgeuse listened and watched them from afar. He could make out snippets of the conversation, and could sense the tension even from outside. 

Chuck, who had been standing when Betelgeuse arrived at his window-turned spying glass, reluctantly sat down. The demon could hear them talking about him, cutting back and forth with distrustful comments and promises to hear out Lydia. They talked for a few moments longer, but even with the assurances, it looked like Lydia was getting nowhere, and the teen looked increasingly upset as the conversation continued. The scene was vaguely reminiscent of what Betelgeuse remembered seeing from the dinner party he had been summoned during, though the scenery was much better. 

Finally, he felt the tug at his gut again, and her words cut through the air clear as day. “Twice,” he mumbled, and flashed inside. Betelgeuse landed with his feet on the table, spread out so he stood between the platters of food. The demon greeted their surprised screams and accusations with a toothy grin. 

“Betelgeuse!” sexy Adam snapped, throwing an arm out in front of Barbara. Though in the poltergeists opinion, it should have been the other way around. Just the thought of Barbara yelling his name like that made him a bit hot under the collar. 

“Careful with that name there,” the aforenamed apparition teased and stepped over some gross leafy bowl towards Lydia, who didn’t appear to be looking at him, oddly enough. “She explained what-”

“Get out!” Chuck snapped at him, and Betelgeuse changed course, hopping off the table. It seemed like any worry of Lydia’s parents being unable to see him was already solved. That meant Betelgeuse’s hunch had been right- the family had already been exposed to enough of the  _ strange and unusual _ to see him. Chuck brandished a fork like it would do him some good, and with the demons next step, Debra jumped up from her chair fast enough that it crashed to the ground. She stood further back, with some unreadable expression on her face. 

Betelgeuse dismissed her. 

“That’s no way to treat a guest,” Betelgeuse admonished. He stepped towards Lydia again. Chuck began to lunge across the table at the same time that Adam sprung to his feet and pulled the limp teenager out of her chair and towards Barbara. 

The demon let himself scowl at this, and vanished out of Chuck’s way, letting the human fall onto the table with. There was a clatter as the man's makeshift weapon fell to the ground. 

Before Betelgeuse could reach out to grab her, Lydia yanked away from Adam with a tremulous, uncoordinated tug. The teen bumped into him and shuddered in response. 

“Hey Scarecrow,” he muttered, assessing her as fast as possible. Betelgeuse wanted to know  _ why _ she wasn’t saying anything. He wanted to know why her eyes were squeezed shut, and why she trembled. Instead of asking, he grabbed her shoulders, felt for just a moment to make sure she was breathing, and teleported her upstairs. Then he let go, letting the girl stumble back before he rejoined the chaos downstairs. 

Immediately upon his reappearance, Barbara crashed into his side, screeching into his ear. “Where is she?!?”

“In the attic,” Betelgeuse snapped. He shoved her away in annoyance. The sound of someone taking off echoed from the other side of the room. Before he could stand all the way back up, Adam was on his other side, crowding him towards the table. Alright then. 

The demon scrambled back (trying to look as dignified as possible), and stood up, phasing through the center of the table to watch them. Sure enough, the ghosts hesitated to follow him through the solid matter. 

He ignored the Maitlands accusations and frankly adorable yelling to glance back at who was left. Danny was a room away, looking up the stairs and tightly grasping a rock that was tied around her neck. Weird.

Betelgeuse focused back on the ghostly couple. If he looked hard enough, he could see where their bones might have been broken, and what could have been a cave-in on A-Dog's skull. A flesh wound here and there from debris. But they were still talking, so Betelgeuse blinked away the visceral imagery and huffed at them. (Huffing was a very breather thing to do. Betelgeuse liked it, though. It was something that previous partners had mentioned, time and time again, that it reminded them of when they were alive, or could make them forget that they were with something undead, depending on the partner). 

“So Lyd’s left all the work up to me?”

“What are you  _ talking _ about?” A-Dog stressed, stepping towards the table. Betelgeuse would have been impressed if he had stepped into it. But he didn’t. How boring. 

“The  _ plan _ ,” the demon replied, and immediately hated how whiney it sounded. If it were a less taxing situation, he might have checked on his hair on that one. 

“What plan? Barbs asked suspiciously. “How long have you been talking to Lydia without us knowing?”

“How do we know she’s really in the attic?” Adam challenged. 

“A few weeks? Because she is?” Betelgeuse struggled to keep up with their questions. “The plan is more complicated-”

“She’s up there!” Deels called from somewhere yonder (where she was  _ apparently _ keeping up with the conversation), and Adam seemed to deflate. 

Barbs however, pressed on, actually  _ stepping _ into the solid matter with him to poke him in the chest.  _ Hard _ . Cool. “What plan?”

“I don’t know? Her talking about me?”

“Why? So you can take over the house again?” B-Town was actually pretty intimidating when she tried to be. Why couldn’t he have awakened this inner beast when he had actually needed it?

“No!” Betelgeuse hurriedly responded. A yell came from upstairs, startling both Maitlands. Behind them, Denise gave a stressed cry. 

“What did you do to Lydia?” Adam snapped. Betelgeuse found himself suddenly unable to answer. “You can’t just take advantage of people like that!”

“Did you hurt her?” Barbara surged forward again, and the threatening physical intimacy (while nice in any other situation) was just reminiscent enough of-.

It was… 

It was  _ enough _ to snap Betelgeuse out of his brief stupor. 

Betelgeuse felt his face heat up, and he made himself taller, and enlarged his width, stalking closer to Barbara. She scuttled back in surprise, out of the table and back to Adam. A red glow came off of Betelgeuse’s hands and up his arms, ready to  _ tear into something, make those death wounds reappear because  _ **_how dare they accuse him of_ ** -

“Betelgeuse!” Diane yelled from behind him. A plate from the table sailed into his back and hit the floor, shattering on impact. He stumbled in his turn to try and stop her before she could-

“Betelgeuse,  _ Betelgeuse _ !” Delilah finished in a slurred rush. Still, it counted, and the demon felt a surge of power flow through him. But he couldn’t find it in himself to spruce it up with the theatrics he usually did, because she summoned him, which, contrary to belief, was exactly what he  _ didn’t _ want. 

“Why isn’t he disappearing?” Donna sounded stressed. He shouldn’t have ignored her. Underestimating people was something that bit him all the time.

He should have known better. Betelgeuse shot the wall a weary look.

“Why did you have to go and do that?” The demon lamented. Adam and Barbara hurried closer, shouting warnings about how he was  _ stronger _ and  _ more dangerous _ now, but the poltergeist couldn’t tear his eyes away from where part of the wall began to open and glow. 

Violent footsteps pounded on the stairs as somebody descended from the attic, and a second pair of heavier footsteps followed. Betelgeuse heard somebody skid to a stop as they entered the room, probably crashing into the overturned chair. As an impossibly long arm stretched out from the portal and grabbed onto his, he heard Lydia yell something. 

Betelgeuse made to say something, to  _ respond _ because Lydia had been inactive the whole conversation, and he didn’t know when (if) he would be back, but before he could get anything out, the arm had pulled him into the door, and slammed it shut behind them. 

Then Betelgeuse was whisked away to his mother. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some stuff is happening! This is a Beetlejuice-centric chapter obviously. I figured that his name is spelled Betelgeuse, like the star, but since Lydia learned it from charades, she spells it like it sounds. Since this is from Beej's perspective, he is called Betelgeuse. 
> 
> In other news, I think I'm gonna call Miss Argentina 'Maria' whenever she's introduced. I don't think it was ever her actual name, but I've seen a few fics do it. So I'll just go off of that. If somebody knows it's origin, I'll cite that.


	6. What Happened In The Attic, Again?

Once she was in the attic, away from the ruckus being caused downstairs, Lydia let herself stop thinking. She grabbed onto a nearby chair, and bodily hauled herself onto the seat. Once off her feet, she tried to count, taking a gasping breath in and then holding it for the allotted time.

After a few deeper breaths, she could inhale without it feeling like a weight was pressing down on her chest. She needed to  _ fix _ what was inevitably going to happen downstairs, but for the moment, she couldn’t make herself stand up from the chair to do so. Lydia felt better without everybody talking (had they yelled?) from every angle. They had  _ tried _ to listen to her, but they had done an abysmal job of it. Rather than letting her explain herself, they had fired question after question. Or perhaps, Lydia had just done a bad job at explaining herself...

Their reactions were expected. Lydia had likely had the nicest time with Beetlejuice all those months ago when they took over the house, and she had still ended up killing him. It was only reasonable that everybody would get worked up over it, as much as she hated the thought. 

But Lydia hadn’t been able to explain how the demon deserved a second chance. As soon as it seemed like they had stopped listening to her, the familiar panic of being erased, of being  _ forgotten _ took over.

Calling Beetlejuice in hadn’t been the brightest idea, and even from up in the attic, the teenager could hear yelling. It wasn’t going to go well. And she would go downstairs once she-

The door to the attic was yanked open, and Lydia sat up to see her father running in, face contorted in fear. 

_ Oh _ . She hadn’t put any thought into how the others would have reacted to Beetlejuice getting her out of the way. 

“Lydia,” her father fell to his knees in front of her. He hovered, uncertain and worried in a wave of parental panic. “What did he-?”

“I’m fine,” Lydia brushed off. She sat forward so she wasn’t slumped over the chair like she had been when getting her breath back. That would only serve to further upset him. “I just got kind of freaked out.”

“Right,” her father slowly relented. He didn’t find anything wrong with her, because there was  _ nothing wrong _ . “Why did you summon that… why did you summon  _ him _ ?”

“I didn’t,” she answered, puzzled. “I only said his name twice.”

Her father wasn’t as versed on Beetlejuice as he could have been. While everybody encouraged her to talk about what she was going through, Lydia knew how to read a room. She saw how they all tensed whenever the subject of the demon was brought up. It was of her own volition that she didn’t talk about it, but now she was wishing that she  _ had _ , because the dinner shouldn’t have gone south so quickly. 

The adult nodded vaguely, and turned to yell down the stairs to Delia that  _ Lydia was fine _ . The teen scrambled up out of the chair as he did so, though she kept a hand on it, trying not to let onto the fact that she was still lightheaded. When her dad looked back to her, he asked the dreaded question. “Then how do we get rid of him?” 

She appreciated that her father was looking to her with guidance. He had on an expression painfully similar to the one he’d made back in the Netherworld, when he had  _ finally _ said Dead Mom’s name.

Despite her appreciation of being listened to, his question did nothing but tick her off. 

“We aren’t!” she yelled. “You didn’t ever let me finish. We are  _ not _ getting rid of my friend!”

“He’s a dangerous individual, Lydia. You don’t know-”

“What don’t I know?” Lydia shot back. 

“How worried I was!” her father tried, but Lydia stepped back from him. “Lydia, please. How do we make him leave?”

When she said nothing, her father’s face hardened. He turned to walk down the stairs, though it turned into a run when another yell sounded from the dining room.

“Beej!” Lydia yelled, elbowing past her dad and stumbling her way down the rest of the stairs. 

The air downstairs felt heavy with energy, and Lydia heard the tailend of Beej’s name fall from Delia’s lips just as she reached the room. And there, hovering anxiously next to the Maitlands was her friend. Unlike the last time he was summoned, there were no excess shows of power or magic. No gleeful whoops. Just a dead, anxious silence that lasted all of ten seconds before a door opened, and Beetlejuice was tugged inside, fear portrayed by the shock-white color of his hair. 

The door slammed shut just as Lydia yelled his name. 

The room, rather than exploding into noise again, fell horribly silent. Lydia turned and shot them all glares, as murderous as she could muster. 

Delia was the first to break, stepping back through the doorway she was huddled in. “I thought that would…”

“Lydia…” Barbara murmured, stepping closer to the girl. “It’s for the best.”

“It’s not,” Lydia scowled. “You don’t know him like I do.”

“He was threatening the Maitlands,” Delia stressed. “Why didn’t he…”

“He wasn’t summoned yet!” the teen whipped around to face her. “You summoned him. I  _ promised _ him that wouldn’t happen! Now he’s who knows where.”

“When?” her dad demanded, making her halt. “Why?”

When it was obvious that no answer was forthcoming, Adam took Barbara’s hand, pulling her back from Lydia. “Why don’t we clean up from dinner, and talk about this? We’ll hear you out.”

“And not bombard me with questions?” Lydia eyed the ghostly couple. 

“Not until after you’ve explained your part,” Adam shrugged, and gave her a weak smile. 

“But we will talk too,” Barbara interjected. “After you of course, dear. But if this is to convince us to let him stay, we  _ need _ to lay down some rules or boundaries. He was  _ horrible _ before.”

Lydia nodded. It was only fair. 

“But first,” her dad spoke up, eyeing the wall with a frown. “Do you know what that door was for?”

“Beej didn’t want to be summoned,” Lydia shrugged. “He said it was a plot device or something, so he’s probably gotten in trouble for it.”

“In trouble?” Delia asked, carefully keeping her gaze level and directed at the place at the table she was cleaning up. 

“Yeah I…” the teen hummed thoughtfully. “I could try summoning him back again, but that could get him in more trouble. He’ll be back… probably.”

“Right,” Adam nodded. 

Barbara gave her a meaningful look. Lydia looked back as passively as she could, trying not to let the worry show on her face. But the adults seemed to notice anyway, and she was rather quickly ushered away to the living room so she could begin ‘ _ gathering her thoughts _ ’. 

  
So Lydia went to piece together what she was going to say. What she would  _ explain _ . If she murmured the demon's name to herself once or twice during her brainstorm, just to make sure he knew she was there, what was the harm?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gaaah thanks for all the comments. And as for Miss Argentina's name (Maria), dweebletpri let me know that it was termed by betelgeuse(TheUltimateFandomer) to their knowledge, so thank you there. I'll be using it soon enough.


	7. Big Whoops

Lydia woke up to the creaking sound of door hinges, and opened her eyes to a bright light slice through the darkness. She squinted through the darkness and watched as her missing friend took an unsteady step through the door, which shut behind him, seemingly of its own accord.

In an instant, she was up out of the bed. The teen took a step to greet him, which coincided with the first, gasping breath he took. The house shook. 

Lydia stumbled, grasping her bed frame for support. “Beej?”

The demon gave a shaky laugh that made the lights flicker on, and looked at her. There were bags under his eyes, and a few, new splotches of some dark green substance on his shirt, up near his shoulder, and down closer to his waist. His face was drawn and complexion pallid, which contrasted with his dark, black-streaked hair. 

“Hey Lyds,” Beetlejuice croaked. 

It had been  _ weeks _ since Lydia had sat down and had the  _ ‘there’s a demon living on our roof _ ’ conversation with her family. Rules had been instigated for when (if) Beetlejuice showed back up. The teen had exhausted the option of trying to summon him back a few times over, and even the Maitland’s trip to the Netherworld to see what had happened only resulted in a panicked customer service lady ushering them back through the door. 

So Lydia took no time in stumbling the rest of the way over to him, nearly falling over as he took another painful-sounding breath that rattled the house all the way to the shutters. 

Before she and Beetlejuice had begun talking again, it had felt like she was missing a friend. She hadn’t realized until he had vanished back through the door how much  _ fun  _ he was, and how he always managed to make her feel visible. But the sight before her was a stark contrast from his usual vibrant energy. 

Beetlejuice caught her when she fell, and the teen held onto his arm while he inhaled again, long and stuttering. A crack climbed up her window. 

“You need to sit down,” she told him, tugging him over to rest at the edge of her bed. 

Once he was sitting, the drawn out, careful breaths became something more of a wheeze, and then devolved into short, hiccuping gasps that obviously weren’t doing him any good. 

“Breath with me,” Lydia ordered quickly, grasping his hands and turning him towards her. The faster she could stop his reality-altering panic attack, the better. So she took a long, drawn out breath, and counted in her head. Mostly, she watched him try to breath. Every pant seemed to shake him down to his bones, and every wheeze seemed to affect something in their immediate vicinity. 

Lydia tried not to flinch as the lights shut back off. She kept her composure when his longer, more controlled breaths, made the doors to her closet and wardrobe swing open and closed. It was only after the lights flicked on and off quickly enough to burn themselves out, and a stack of papers had fallen off her desk to be scattered across the floor, that Lydia could step back. Beetlejuice was finally able to take normal looking (and sounding) inhalation of air. 

Beetlejuice looked down at their linked hands, and pulled away from her like she had burned him. Lydia didn’t comment, rolling her eyes and grabbing for the flashlight on her dresser so she could find the scattered papers.

“I don’t know how nobody has come to see what happened yet,” Lydia remarked, after collecting about half of the papers. Beetlejuice was still sitting on her bed, perched like he was ready to flee at a moment's notice. 

“I sound-proofed it?” the demon answered. It sounded more like a question than a statement, and Lydia glanced at him. 

“Can you undo it?”

Beetlejuice nodded mutely, and hunched in on himself. 

Lydia pursed her lips, and took a few minutes to put the stack of papers back on her desk while she thought. She would need new light bulbs, obviously, because in his panic, he had taken out even her lamp. The teen didn’t like how upset he was, but she still wanted answers. 

“I’m not going to make you talk about anything,” she said slowly. “But I am supposed to tell my parents and Adam and Barbara when you’re back.”

“So they can kick me back out?” Beetlejuice asked, giving her a wide grin that didn’t reach his eyes. 

“No,” Lydia said sharply, turning back to squint at his face through the darkness. “So they can tell you all the rules they came up with. And ask if you have any, or something like that.”

“... What.”

“My parents are willing to let you stay,” she reiterated, making an effort not to sound condescending. Lydia knew how much that could upset a person. “I managed to explain more stuff to them, but they want to talk to you themselves.”

“Huh,” Beetlejuice muttered. Lydia watched him pick at his suit for a few minutes as she climbed back into bed. He shifted further away, closer to gothic-themed footboard. “Didn’t expect that,” he said, turning to face her. 

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. Beetlejuice tried to make himself look ‘ _ more presentable _ ’ by standing and reaching to brush his palms along the top of her ceiling fan, which he then ran through his hair.

“Hey, Beej?” Lydia asked, once he was looking a little more himself. His hair was still black, and his breathing was stilted, and he occasionally gave a small huff or gasp that threatened to dim even her phone’s light. But he looked a bit less disturbed, altogether. More ready to spazz out at a moment's notice, like usual. “Can I ask you what the plot device was?”

“My mom,” came the rather speedy response. And alright. She tried to recall what she knew of the woman. The hag's arrival, while initially frightening, had been rather short-lived, as it had quickly been taken care of by Beetlejuice himself. The teenager wasn’t too surprised that she was back from the dead, as it only made sense that she would be more powerful than the average ghost, like Beej was. Then he continued, gesturing wildly. “There was a line about it  _ in _ the last chapter.”

“What- ugh, nevermind. What did she do?”

“What didn’t she do?” he laughed humorlessly, looking suddenly sick. “I know what she didn’t do, but…”

Lydia waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, she pushed herself down further into the bed, and lightly kicked at his arm. “Are you still summoned?”

“Yeah, I... guess so. If I was doing all  _ this _ to your room.”

“Since you’re summoned, you can interact with the real world, right?” the teen asked, honestly curious. 

“Yeah, that’s pretty much the gist of it.”

“So you can pull pranks on everybody else with me?”

Beetlejuice shifted. “I can,” he said hesitantly. 

“... But?”

“Lyds, I appreciate the offer but… I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Beej sighed and sat up a bit, giving her a look. “You sure they’ll let me stay here?”

“I think so,” Lydia responded slowly. 

“Great, ‘cause… I’m stuck here. So I probably shouldn’t make them anymore upset than they are.”

Lydia leaned back, considering his plight. “Stuck  _ here _ ? Like on Earth?”

“Well, stuck in the breather world. I’m sort of exiled.  _ Again _ .”

“Well,” Lydia said. She shined her light on him, Beetlejuice reached into his pocket, and took out what looked like a juul. “What? You can’t just smoke?”

“Nah, This is cooler,” came the dismissive response.

“It really isn’t.”

“Whatever,” the poltergeist stuck out his tongue at her. 

“I’m gonna tell them you’re here in the morning,” Lydia reminded him, now that he looked a bit more comfortable. Even if that came from an apparent affinity for vapes. She didn’t really want to ask where a dead guy could buy something like that. 

“Sure, kid. Even if it  _ is _ already morning. Pranks later?”

“Pranks later,” she agreed. “But you’re helping me fix my lights.”

“You could just get a bunch of candles,” Beetlejuice argued. 

“I’m not allowed. For reasons such as ‘ _ Lydia, you can’t keep trying to set the house on fire _ ’, or something like that,” Lydia responded. Beej nodded his approval, and Lydia grinned wryly before setting her flashlight aside. “Don’t vape in my room. I’ve gotta sleep.”

“And what? Go back to the roof?” she could no longer see him, but she was pretty sure he was pouting. 

“You should have taken me up on my prank offer,” Lydia shrugged, laying down. “I’ll get up before everybody else. You could go hang out downstairs if you don’t cause  _ too _ much chaos. Just like, watch TV or something.”

“Bold of you to assume I know how TV’s work in this day and age.”

“Unfortunate,” Lydia sniped back, and closed her eyes. She waited a minute. The weight sinking into her mattress lifted up, and he walked to her door, footsteps heavy and attention drawing. Her door opened, and shut with a bit of a bang, and the teen sighed. He better not get himself caught before morning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heeello. We unfortunately do not get to see Beej with his mom quite yet. I think it's better not to show everything. So I'll let you guys infer and such ;3  
> Got some of the idea of the reality-shifting panic attack from 'if i break my face' by TheWholeEatingBreadThing


End file.
